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Oregon Health and Science University

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GE Healthcare recently announced plans to increase the capabilities of OHSU’s Mission Control Center by developing a software application, or “tile,” that will suggest actions to support better management of sepsis patient care.

GE Healthcare’s new tile will support early sepsis detection and timely, precise ongoing management of at-risk patients and those who are on the sepsis patient pathway, monitoring all patients not only those who are in the intensive care unit. Once the algorithm detects risk, it will flag mission controllers who will research the situation and help care teams as needed to ensure a rapid response and the best possible patient care.

“Sepsis is difficult to diagnose, and if not treated early, is associated with high mortality rates,” said Matthias Merkel, M.D., Ph.D., medical director of adult critical care and chief medical capacity Officer at OHSU; and professor of anesthesiology and perioperative medicine in the OHSU School of Medicine. “The objective of this new sepsis tile and algorithm is to provide our team with a head start to help us catch sepsis before it strikes.”

In July 2017, OHSU opened its Mission Control Center to reduce delays in patient care, improve patient transfers and utilization between the three hospitals within the health system; reduce length of stay; and connect disparate data systems. One year later, the results demonstrate improved clinical and operational outcomes in the following areas:

“The year before we opened the Mission Control Center, we declined more than 500 transfer patients from referring hospitals,” says James Heilman, M.D., M.B.A., chief medical transfer officer at OHSU; and assistant professor of emergency medicine in the OHSU School of Medicine. “Today patient transfers to our partner community hospitals have increased, which gives us the confidence to expand the program to include a sepsis solution to help with early detection.”

OHSU is the first hospital in the Pacific Northwest region to launch GE Healthcare’s NASA-style Mission Control Center to coordinate care between an academic health center and partner community hospitals.

“OHSU is taking its program to the next level by supporting sepsis patient care,” said Jeff Terry, CEO of Command Centers, GE Healthcare. “This is a great example of the scalability of the command center concept. It’s an honor to serve the OHSU team.”